Was Leviathan a Parasaurolophus?

And how can we determine the behaviour of extinct animals?

30 June 2007

This week’s feedback is from Matthew R, age 11, of British Columbia, Canada,
who asks about the identity of Leviathan. There follows a reply from
Andrew Lamb (a ‘scaled up’ version of the reply he sent to Matthew).

Photo Dinoguy2 at Wikipedia.org

Parasaurolophus skull

Dear Creation people,

I read your book Dinosaurs by Design and after reading about
the leviathan, I looked it up in the Bible. I read it and I have a few objections
to it being a Parasaurolophus. No. 1: it’s a herbivore (which might
not be very significant,) No. 2: Job probably lived in Mesopotamia: all remains
of it were found in North America, and No. 3: My Dad’s Bible called it a crocodile
but crocs can’t breathe fire. I’d like you to write back and tell me
your opinion on this.

Sincerely,

Matthew age 11

Dear Matthew

Thank you for your letter.

Ideas and Identity

The most promising candidate for Leviathan is Sarcosuchus, a monstrous ‘armour-plated’
crocodile. Sarcosuchus had an unusual bulbous cavity at the end of its snout ….

There are several ideas about the identity of Leviathan. Some creationists have
suggested that Leviathan might have been a giant marine reptile such as Kronosaurus
or Liopleurodon, while others have proposed the T. rex, and
yet others have mooted the crocodile. At CMI we think the most promising candidate
for Leviathan is Sarcosuchus, a monstrous ‘armour-plated’ crocodile.
Sarcosuchus had an unusual bulbous cavity at the end of its snout that
could conceivably have been used for mixing fire-generating chemicals. This is discussed
in the Sarcosuchus chapter of Dragons of the Deep by Carl Wieland,
as well as in a Journal of Creation article by another author, who had
came to the same conclusion independently.&sup1

The book Dinosaurs by Design mentions Parasaurolophus in relation
to Leviathan, but as you note, Job 41:31 indicates that Leviathan was an aquatic creature,
while duck-billed dinosaurs like Parasaurolophus are generally considered
to be land animals.&sup2

Bones and Behaviour

It is not always easy to tell whether an animal is a land animal or an aquatic animal.
Think of hippos. They look much like a land animal, and will readily walk on land,
but they actually spend most of their time in the water.

There is much about a creature that can be reliably inferred from fossil bones.
Growth rings in bones are indicative of a reptile (see
How did dinosaurs grow so big?). A certain type of bone marrow structure
(medullary bone) is indicative of a female egg-layer.&sup3 Muscle attachment marks on bones can indicate muscle
size. Type of locomotion can be determined from ear bones (see
That new missing link) and limb bones (see
Lucy was a knuckle walker). Acuity of smell can be inferred from skull
cavities or indentations associated with the olfactory organs (see
Sue the T. rex), and recent studies of pterosaur skulls indicate that their
brains would have allowed sophisticated flight control—see
Terrific pterosaur flyers.

When it comes to animal behaviour, it is not really possible to make reliable inferences
from teeth and bones alone.

However, when it comes to animal behaviour, it is not really possible to
make reliable inferences from teeth and bones alone. Here’s what one secular
science writer said about the difficulty of inferring behaviour from fossil remains:

Imagine an upside-down pyramid with, at the pointed bottom, the word “bones”.
Bones are the known commodity, the solid evidence. They are aged; they may be broken,
cracked, ambiguous. But you can at least hold them in your hand. Above bones on
the inverted pyramid are soft tissues. There aren’t many of those because
they rarely fossilize. Above that—so very far from the hard evidence of bones—is
behavior. Above that is environmental interaction. The dream would be to know the
behaviors of many different dinosaurs and to be able to put them in context so you’d
know what dinosaurs ate and where they slept and what they feared and how they prowled
the landscape. And at the very top of the inverted pyramid, as far from science
as you can get, is … well, probably the purple dinosaur known as Barney.4

So, the idea that Parasaurolophus was exclusively land-dwelling in its
behaviour could easily be wrong. In fact, there exists an 1845 newspaper report
detailing eyewitness accounts of living creatures that fit the description of duck-billed
dinosaurs, and the witnesses said these creatures inhabited swamps—see
Bunyips and dinosaurs and Living proof?
Ultimately, observations and records are the only sure means of determining the
behaviour of animals, just as reliable historical records (and the Bible is a supremely
reliable historical record) are the only sure means of determining what really happened
in the past.

Dinosaurs by Design includes a picture of a duck-billed dinosaur in shallow
water, on page 38, and a picture of a fire-breathing Parasaurolophus in
shallow water on page 82. On page 82 the author discusses fire-breathing Leviathan
and suggests that Parasaurolophus may have breathed fire. However, he does
not actually say that he thinks Leviathan was Parasaurolophus. He seems
to just be giving Parasaurolophus as an example of a creature with skeletal
apparatus that could conceivably have been used for producing fire.

Before the Fall, all animals were herbivorous (Genesis 1:30–31), but in the cursed post-Fall world
of today it seems that virtually any creature will resort to carnivory if hungry
enough.

Scientists will often declare an animal to be herbivorous or carnivorous based on
study of its teeth, but diet cannot be ascertained with certainty by this method.
Based on its teeth, the kinkajou was long classified as a carnivore, but when researchers
baited traps with meat, the kinkajous refused to bite. To find out what food did
work in their traps, see
Catching a kinkajou. And there are some bats that eat only fruit, and others
that eat only insects, but all bats have similarly pointy teeth, as shown in
Match the bat’s teeth. And some bats even use those same pointy teeth
for obtaining blood—see
The Dracula connection to a young earth.

Graph Pearsall, Deborah M. at http://www.missouri.edu/~phyto/

Phytoliths: These are tiny silica beads
produced in plant leaves and sometimes found on teeth. Different plant families
produce their own distinctively-shaped phytoliths. Thus, it can be possible to identify
certain fossil creatures as herbivores, and even to identify what plants they ate,
from their fossil teeth. Phytoliths can also be found in fossil dinosaur droppings
(coprolites).19,20

Beak shape in birds is not a reliable indicator of diet either. For example most
raptors use their sharp curved beaks to tear flesh, but there is one eagle that
is vegetarian, and it has exactly the same sort of beak as its carnivorous cousins—see
The ‘bird of prey’ that’s
not. Another dramatic example is the oilbird,
which is totally vegetarian and yet is classified as a bird of prey. For other examples
of unexpected diet in birds, see
Kea: clever, clownish and carnivorous!? and Vampire finches of the Galápagos
(Creation29(3):52–53).

For many years, scientists have used examination of fossilised digestive tract contents
and coprolites as a means of finding out what extinct creatures ate—see T. rex drops clue,
Ichthyosaur’s
last supper, Early
shark intact! and Dino
dinner hard to swallow? And now microscopic examination of fossil
teeth can also be used to reveal precise information (in some cases) about diet,
from the presence of tiny phytoliths (see Phytoliths box). But
without direct fossil evidence of diet like this, it is not really possible to be
sure what an extinct creature would have eaten. Feeding and diet are to a large
extent behavioural.

Life and Location

Most of the world’s fossils are of animals and plants that died in the Flood.
If the Parasaurolophus fossils found in North America are Flood fossils,
then the location of these fossils now doesn’t actually indicate anything
about where these creatures lived or didn’t live in the post-Flood world.
At CMI we think that prior to the Flood there may have been a single continent (the
single sea of Genesis 1:9 implies a single continent) and that it was
during the global upheaval of the Flood that the present configuration of continents
came into being—see Probing the earth’s deep
places. The pre-Flood world was destroyed (2 Peter 3:6) and buried under kilometres-thick layers
of sediment, now turned to rock.

Graph from Oard p117 (see ref 21)

Ice Age: The above graph21
shows the estimated volume of water locked up in post-Flood ice sheets. As continental
ice cover increased, sea levels would have decreased proportionately, exposing land
bridges between continents and allowing migration of animals and people over routes
that are now submerged. Australian fauna is notable for its many kinds of marsupials,
and for the absence (prior to the coming of Europeans) of cats. It may be that in
the early post-Flood centuries marsupials were able to reach Australia while cats
were not. Ice Age fluctuation in sea level could conceivably have played a role.
Click here for a larger view.

During the first few post-Flood centuries, as the animals spread out from the Mountains
of Ararat where the Ark landed (Genesis 8:4) populations of every kind of animal could well
have developed on every continent (with the possible exception of Australia—see
Ice Age box). Perhaps it was only later that climate changes,
hunting, etc. caused some kinds to go extinct on some continents while surviving
on others, leading to the distinctively different regional faunas of today.

Job lived in the ‘Land of Uz’ (Job 1:1). Some scholars think Uz was in the region of present
day Iraq (Mesopotamia). Others think Uz was southeast of the Dead Sea, in areas
now part of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. These three countries all form part of the
‘Middle East’ region, which from a global perspective is quite close
to the Mountains of Ararat. So it seems reasonable to think that most kinds of animals,
including both Parasaurolophus and Sarchosuchus, may once have
been found in Job’s homeland of Uz, even though only certain kinds of animals
live in the Middle East now.

After the Flood, many of the places that are now deserts were green and lush12–18,
still waterlogged from the Flood, and still enjoying high rainfall due to the warm
post-Flood seas (warmer seas cause more evaporation which causes more precipitation,
and the seas were warm due to volcanic activity associated with the breaking open
of the fountains of the deep during the Flood). Although only some animals can survive
in Iraq (Mesopotamia) now, due to the hot dry climate, in the lush conditions of
the first millennium or two after the Flood probably all kinds of creatures could
have thrived there.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Lamb

Information Officer

Recommended Resources

Sixteen spectacular sea giants, including the best candidate for Leviathan, feature
in this stunningly illustrated book. Mighty predators like Liopleurodon,
and the lesser-known sea serpent Styxosaurus probably inspired tales of
sea dragons before they became extinct; the whale-wrestling colossal squid was thought
to be mythical until its recent live discovery. Fantastic creatures and fascinating
facts impart a thoroughly biblical worldview. Hardcover. 80 pages.

Parasaurolophus probably lived in large herds and inhabited flood plains.
They were herbivores but they were not, as was once thought, aquatic. They were
fully terrestrial animals, as evidenced by footprints. They could possibly swim
but they lived their entire lives on land.

A farmer in eastern India thought one of the local dogs had eaten 48 of his chickens.
But when he and his brother stood guard one night to catch the culprit, they saw
his calf emerge from the cowshed and start gobbling up the chickens alive. ‘Instead
of the dogs, we watched in horror as the calf, whom we had fondly named Lal, sneaked
to the coop and grabbed the little ones with the precision of a jungle cat.’

Local television pictures showed the cow catching and eating a chicken in seconds,
and the local vet (who confirmed the case) had never previously read or heard of
cows turning carnivorous (meat-eating).

However, instances of herbivores (plant-eaters) killing and eating animals are not
uncommon (e.g. Creation21(4):9;
22(2):5; 24(3):9). This shows how an animal that is normally a plant-eater
can turn to carnivory, as has happened with many animals since the Fall. Conversely,
today’s ‘carnivores’ can be herbivorous-an ‘echo’
of the originally perfect world in which all animals were vegetarian (Genesis 1:30).

Even today most carnivores are far from being as totally carnivorous as we are led
to believe. My own dog will eat anything: bread, mushrooms, fruit and even birdseed.
She even taught my other old dog how to raid the apricot tree.

I have also witnessed where an animal usually deemed a herbivore turns carnivore.
Camping on Kangaroo Island [South Australia], I stared in amazement one evening
when, having dropped my barbeque steak sandwich, two grey kangaroos dived upon it
and devoured it within seconds. While I expected they’d eat the bread, I couldn’t
believe my eyes to see them happily gobble up the meat as well. [This] heavy species
of kangaroo [was] thought to consume only grass.

My brother-in-law in Charters Towers has a mango tree that was so loaded with fruit
that the branches bowed down to the ground. His pig dogs ate all the fruit that
was on the ground or touching the ground, apparently with relish.

The article on the vegetarian lion (22(2):22–23,
March–May 2000) sure was interesting . My cousin has a vegetarian dog. Although
she will eat some meat, she prefers fruit and vegetables. She eats apples, capsicum,
cabbage, and anything like that given to her. So it’s probably not as uncommon
as I thought.

Please keep up the fantastic work; remember the three angels’ message of Revelation 14:6–7—your ministry
is making people aware of our Creator and Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.

My husband and I own a dog, Katie, who will happily pilfer our backyard produce
if given the chance.

Last summer she made the discovery that apricots are good to eat, as we found half-eaten
fruit strewn across the backyard. By the time we worked out what was going on, there
were very few left for our use. Recently she also developed a taste for the wild
mushrooms which grow out of our lawn.

On speaking to a number of friends, apparently it is not uncommon; their dogs have
raided everything from figs and raspberries to even walnuts. It would seem that
some carnivores can and do still have a taste for their pre-Fall diet.

Land of Uz. The land of Uz is mentioned in Lamentations 4:21 as home to the “daughter of Edom.”
Edom was the same as Esau, brother of Jacob, who later moved into the region around
the southern end of the Dead Sea. It was possibly named after Uz, the grandson of
Seir the Horite (Ge 36:20–21,28), who gave his own name to Mount Seir,
in the land of Edom. He, in turn, may have been named after Uz, the grandson of
the patriarch Shem (Ge 10:21–23). Alternatively, Shem may himself have
first settled this region.

When lightning strikes sand, the sand frequently melts to produce hollow glassy
columns called fulgurites. You can buy your own fulgurite on eBay, where you may
find it described as ‘Sahara glass’, because most of the fulgurites
that are for sale originated in the Sahara desert. This has attracted the attention
of climatologists, who believe the presence of fulgurites in the desert indicates
that conditions were much wetter and cloudier in these regions in the past. Fulgurites
are now used as palaeoclimatic indicators for the historical occurrence of such
conditions … LF

White, M., After the Greening: The Browning of Australia,
Kangaroo Press, 1994:

During the Late Palaeocene and Early Eocene widespread rainforest may have extended
over most of the [Australian] continent. ... it was a well vegetated land with diverse
forest communities forming a mosaic over much of the land. (p. 55)

Will, R.S., History of the Australian Vegetation: Cretaceous
to Recent, Cambridge University Press, 1994:

‘Vegetation was subtropical to tropical rainforest across the south (Blackburn,
1981) and western coasts, even to the northwest, and into central Australia (Lange,
1982; Truswell & Harris, 1982).’ (p. 32; see also map p. 31)

The monsoon rains once were abundant before the Holocene … in the interior
of Australia which favored forests where now there are vast acres of scrub land
report Gifford Miller and associates at the University of Colorado, the National
Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, and the Australian National University,
Canberra. The Australian monsoon now delivers about 1000 millimeters (39.4 inches)
of rain in northern Australia, but only 300 mm (11.8 inches) fall in central Australia.
The authors state that if the central part of Australia were forested the monsoon
rain would be twice as great. They noted that fossil evidence shows that animals
of central Australia browsed on leaves. Fossil evidence shows also that humans arrived
in central Australia about this time and the authors think that they built fires
that eventually changed the tree-shrub-grassland into a semiarid zone and desert
scrub to weaken the biospheric feedback. These fires may have been the cause of
the long-term desertification of the continent.